Throughout history brushes of various materials of construction and shapes have been utilized for grooming and treating various hair or fiber types. These brushes, while often marketed for specific applications, are equally applicable for uses in grooming human or animal hair and natural and synthetic fibers. The primary purpose of brushes is to remove debris from hair and/or fibers and to separate the strands. Brushes are also very often utilized to curl or shape hair and/or fibers in particular by wrapping strands about a brush and applying a medium such as heat and/or other compound to maintain the strands in a formed position. For brevity and illustration this specification addresses the utilization of brushes for hair grooming and treatment.
Conventional brushes have a main body divided into a handle and bristle section. The bristle section has a plurality of bristles extending outwardly therefrom. These brushes are designed with varying materials of construction and alignment and density of bristles for grooming various textures and thickness of hairs. One drawback of these conventional brushes is their limited ability to be utilized for effective self-styling of hair and removal from hair without losing the form of the hair. Another drawback of conventional brushes is the inability to painlessly remove the brush from tangled hair.
Prior art brushes have tried to address the problem of utilizing retractable bristles to address self-styling and tangling concerns with limited success. However, these prior art retractable bristle brushes typically utilize complicated systems of movement that increase the cost of manufacture of the brush, require two hands to operate effectively, fail due to material collected within the operating components of the brush and often do not provide the ability to style hair without creating undue tangling of hair.
One example of a retractable bristle brush is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,226,251 to Wall. This brush is rectangular shaped preventing effective curling of hair and requires a two-step process of depressing a cantilever and sliding a mechanism to lock the bristles in a retracted position. U.S. Pat. No. 5,815,877 to Heneveld provides a rectangular brush wherein bristles are retracted from the topside of the brush by moving a sleeve that holds the bristles along a bottom side of the brush retracting the bristles into the brush handle.
Several prior art brushes provide a circular bristle sections that require extensive mechanical systems and movement to retract and/or extend the bristles. U.S. Pat. No. 6,070,594 to Mears discloses a circular brush having bristles mounted on rotatable axles, which are then moveably mounted on an inner mandrel with the bristles extending through slots through an outer mandrel rotatably mounted on the brush. The system requires a user to rotate the inner mandrel in relation to the outer mandrel while maintaining the brush in a styling position to retract the bristles.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,596,261 to Renda et al. discloses a complicated system utilizing cams and grooves and includes several control mechanisms to retract and extend the bristles. The brush as disclosed does not provide for single hand use in styling one's hair.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,567,905 to Stewart et al. discloses another version of a cam operated slidable retractable bristle brush. The bristle retraction control operates by co-action with a rotatable cylindrical mandrel having pivotal bristles.
It is thus desired to provide a retractable bristle brush that allows a user to utilize a single hand to retract or extend the bristles from the brush. It is a further desire to provide a retractable bristle brush that reduces the number of moving parts and thus the associated problems with sticking and loss of use of prior art brushes. It is a still further desire to provide an economical retractable bristle brush.